Becca Jane St Clair

It’s been a hot minute since I blogged anything at all, and for that I don’t really have any excuse other than I have been using facebook more and more to post updates over the years and hardly anyone actually reads this blog anyway, so part of me felt what was the point?

But anyway.

I was going to sign myself up for NaNoWriMo again this year. I will be away at the beginning of the month, but I was confident that I could catch myself up easily and make it to the end of the month. The last time I did a proper NaNo was in 2018, where I wrote my Star Trek TNG Picard/Crusher epic story, Milestones. I wrote Milestones as a 40-chapter epic (over 165k words!) to celebrate my 40th birthday in 2019. I wrote it during November 2018, and published chapter one in the last week of November, with a chapter per week going up until my 40th birthday with chapter 40. It was amazing. I had such great time participating, but I didn’t participate in future years because I completely lost my writing mojo during the pandemic and still haven’t entirely found it. I actually stopped writing TNG fanfic during the pandemic, leaving a few stories unfinished and even my switch to Harry Potter (Snupin) hasn’t been prolific. I have a few in-progress stories there that haven’t been updated in almost a year or more, too.

But I thought this year would be my year. I would commit to writing something. But….then the people who created NaNoWriMo have decided to issue a statement saying that they will allow people to use AI to create their novels and this doesn’t sit right with me or really, most of my author friends. You see, we work HARD for our writing. AI jumping in has really ruined people’s careers, especially for those who relied on writing articles (usually without credit but with PAYMENT) for websites, journals, and magazines. but now many places have either turned to AI or turned to asking for volunteers to do it for the exposure/experience. I don’t think AI has any place in novel writing, especially not in a “competition” Ok, NaNo isn’t really a competition, but you get my drift.

So I won’t be doing NaNo. I will pick a different month where I will sit down and commit myself to daily writing until I have something.

In previous years, I’ve also participated in NaBloPoMo, but even that leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It’s also too late for me to organize myself for flufftober as I’m away at the end of the month. So…Blogvember. Maybe.

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Hey everyone, today I was a guest blogger over on Bugs and Fishes with a post about making Christmas crackers. You might remember I made some last year, and I’ll be making the ones for this year soon, too. Go check it out! And check out Bugs and Fishes, it’s a great blog!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, the RSS feed(s), or through an e-mail subscription, please notify me.

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Facebook has taken away the option to read blog posts directly as notes as of 22 November. My blog posts will still post over to facebook, but you will have to click on a link to go to my website to read them. I also have heard complaints recently about the new Google Reader, and I have to say, I’m not a fan of their new layout either. To make it easier for those of you who want to read my blog posts but don’t want to have to go to my website or use an RSS reader, I have added an e-mail subscription option. Just scoll down on the right side until you see “Subscribe by email” and put your email address in the box and click “subscribe”. For those of you reading this on Facebook, LiveJournal, or an RSS feed, go to http://blog.beccajanestclair.com and then scroll down to the subscribe by email option.

Okay, so editing the .htaccess file to block hotlinking didn’t work.

I managed to even cause my server a 500 internal server error in the process.

Crap.

Anyone know of a way to batch watermark images? With the number I tend to post (especially with Austria pics) it will take AGES to watermark everything, but at this point, I feel I really need to in case places are hotlinking to my pics.

Argh. This is really frustrating.

Basically, the .htaccess file was blocking images on the RSS feed and on the LJ Feed even though it wasn’t supposed to and no matter what I added to the file, it still blocked things. And I really don’t think that most of my readers ever even click through to my site, unless it’s to leave a comment, as most people read things on one of the RSS feeds, so it’s a little counter-productive to say “click through to my site to see pics”.

Blegh.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users can comment directly on Facebook.]

The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

Yesterday, I was looking at my blog statistics, and this website popped up as being a referring website. I always like to check my referrers just to see what they are, and if it’s another blog that’s linked to me, I like to read a few posts and consider adding a link back.

Well. Not this website. Apparently, they not only were hot linking my image of banoffee pie I made several weeks back, they also copied word-for-word my entire post* about making banoffee pie…and the website appears to have no contact information listed, and they’ve conveniently disabled the ability to leave comments on posts. Right clicking on other images and clicking “view image” showed me all sorts of images that had been pulled from other websites, blogs, even livejournal. This leads me to believe that the entire food.tasteonline.info website just copy/pastes in other people’s blog posts….especially after they copied a post from the Guardian and the bottom of the post says:

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

I managed to disable the hotlinking of the image. That was pretty simple and involved editing the .htaccess file (you can google for instructions if you’ve had this problem, too, or even add a WordPress plug-in. Just search the plug-ins for “disable hotlink”). The images (So far) still copy over to the RSS feed and the Facebook feed, but will not show up on any other website.

But what can I do about the copied words? Nothing, really. It would be possible to track down the website owners, but often that doesn’t even give you the proper information. For example, if you check who “owns” my domain, it will list Dreamhost, my hosting company because they protect their client’s identities.

I had another problem recently where a camping website had pulled my post about what you need to drive on the continent. On their site, they claimed it was “edited from” and at least included the link back to my article. The edit was pretty bad though. They changed random words and it wound up not making sense, but again, not much I could really do about it, other than leaving a comment on the article and asking them to remove it.

But since the people that run the sites seem to copy in every last word of a post, so from now on the bottom of every post of mine is going to include a copyright notice similar to the one I use under the photos.

I also looked into disabling right clicking, but then that would also disable the “open in new tab” option if someone wanted to click on a link. I suppose I could also start watermarking all the photos I put on the blog, but that would take ages to do, as all of the “batch watermark” programs I tried in the past were horrible.

*I looked at the banoffee pie recipe again. It appears to be lifted straight off the LJ cooking community, and not my actual blog.

Hmm. I’m going to test posting an image here just to make sure it posts over to the RSS and Facebook feed.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me. Facebook users can comment directly on Facebook.]

The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

One thing I really struggle with as a housewife is being a GOOD housewife. I always worry that I’m not doing enough…or if I get distracted (which, I easily get!) by a webpage or book and haven’t done much with my day, I feel like I’m a failure.

Well. I’m going to try to change that.

See, I already meal plan every week because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do a Tesco order. I try to meal plan on the Friday before (which is why I don’t participate in Meal Plan Monday that often) so I can place my order for a Monday or Tuesday delivery. It works out pretty well, and sometimes I even get the following week planned at the same time. Meal planning takes up a decent chunk of my day. I like to try one new recipe each week*, so sometimes I spend as much as an hour looking through cookbooks. Sometimes I mark more than one new recipe if I’ve found several interesting ones. Sometimes I’ll pass Tim a cookbook and tell him to pick something. Sometimes, I’ll try to come up with something to do with leftovers other than freezing them for a homemade ready meal. Then, I make a list of ingredients I need, sometimes looking up recipes for our favourites. After I have my full weekly ingredient list, I spend time going through the pantry, freezer, and fridge to see what items are already “in stock” and also to check what I’m running low on. And then, of course, I have to put the order into Tesco’s website. This doesn’t take too long, since I can go in and see my “favourites” and just click on the things we order each week – bread, milk, eggs, chicken (nearly every week. What can I say? My husband loves his roast dinners).

But anyway. This wasn’t going to be a post of me babbling about how I meal plan. This was going to be a post about how I’m getting myself more organized and trying to become a better housewife. Not a Donna Reid (who I had to explain to Tim), but a good housewife. Though, if anyone wants to send me a frilly apron, I promise I’d wear it! (and I need a new one as I’ve had to throw one out for ripping beyond repair)

Last Christmas (2009), my mom put a magnetic notepad in my stocking. It’s about 7 inches wide, 5 inches long and has columns for the days of the week across the top. Monday through Friday have full page columns, and Saturday and Sunday split the 6th column. I used this pad sporadically for meal planning in 2010, but I kept feeling like I wasn’t using it to it’s full potential. Most of the columns only used up a line or two where I wrote in what I was making. Occasionally I’d write an event on it, but usually it was largely left blank and became scrap paper after the week was out.

There are about 30 sheets left on it. I don’t know what I’ll do when I run out of sheets, but for now, here’s what I do –

First, I write at the top of each day what the date will be, followed by what shift Tim is on. Then, I take a coloured pen, and I write in the meal plan. I use other colours to designate other things, too. Tim and I both want to make sure we get on the Wii Fit every day, so I’ve written it on the planner. I write down deliveries and meetings, and I even started scheduling what cleaning tasks I’d like to do each day. I also added (after I scanned it) blogging, so I can keep my promise of weekly blogging…I haven’t been doing so great since the start of the new year, but I think I can pick up the pace.

Will it keep me organized? Who knows. But at least, I have things written down. Sometimes, I don’t always make the meals in the order they appear on the weekly meal plan, so I’ll probably do that with the cleaning, too.

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*So we don’t get stuck in a rut of the same old stand-by meals. I mean, Tim would be happy with a roast chicken every week, and I’d be happy with pasta every week, but I have to mix it up a bit!

We’re halfway through the month for NaBloPoMo, and so far I’m actually reaching my goal of one post/day, and I still have plenty to blog about!

After the month is up, I will probably scale back my posting, but in the new year, I’m hoping for a few goals regarding my blog:

1. Blogging at least three times/week. It could mean M-W-F, it could mean F-Sa-Su, but I want to blog at least three times each week. Four, five, six, or seven times will be a bonus! I’ll also try not to post twice in one day like I sometimes have to spread out the posts. I can’t always guarantee brilliant posts, but I will try!

2. More vlogs, even if it’s of mundane things. You guys seem to really like the vlogs (especially if Tim talks!), so I want to give you what you want! I still don’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, so I’ll still be talking from behind the scenes most likely. Also, a house tour at some point in 2011.

3. Regular recipe posts. I want to try to post recipes once every fortnight (that’s 14 days/two weeks). I’d go for more often, but I don’t want my blog to turn into a recipe blog….even if my friend Lynne thinks I should write a cookbook. (I wouldn’t know where to start)

4. On time posts! No more “I was here back in March”. I am going to try to get blog posts up the same month the event happens. Preferably within a week of it happening, but I will give myself a goal of within the month. Maybe a better goal is “within four weeks”, so if I do something on the 29th of the month I’m not left scrambling to get an entry up before the end of the month!

I’m really enjoying writing daily, and even though some of the things I’m blogging about are past events, I’m still having a great time doing it. If I don’t get all caught up on previous events, I will get them all finished by the end of 2010. Save for anything I do while my mom is visiting, because I probably will want to spend time with her and not blog!

At the end of NabloPoMo, I will revisit my list of things I wanted to blog about, and I will make another list and make sure I get them all done.

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Today’s post marks 250 posts for my blog! I started this blog a little over two years ago (I missed the blog anniversary), and I’ve averaged 2-3 posts/week. Not bad!

This milestone comes at a good place, too. My birthday is in two days. I’ll be 31. Somehow, it’s not so bad. I panicked when I turned 30, but in the past year I’ve gotten married, moved across an ocean, joined a ladies barbershop chorus, and done so many things I had never done before.

Bring on 250 more posts!

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